The Forbidden City was our next destination. Our group enjoyed walking though the very halls and courtyards where the Emperors of old China lived. At one time, such insolence would have gotten you and your entire family killed. Now you get to take pictures of the Emperor’s wedding bedchamber.
After a delicious lunch we jumped in pedi-cabs for a Hutong tour. The Hutongs are the old part of Beijing. Very few of them survived China’s modernization in the 20th century. The surviving ones are now considered national relics and protected by the government. We travelled the narrow back alleys until we arrived at a fully intact Hutong. The family elder bought it in 1934 for 56 grams of gold. It is now worth several million dollars. During the land reform, the family was forced to share it with several other families. In the past few years, these families have moved out and now the owners are the sole occupants.
Yi Jing and medicine joined other after dinner. We met some of our friends who are doing work in to help integrate TCM and western medicine. They are physicians trained in Traditional Chinese Medicine and western medicine, as well as secret family healing methods based upon the Yi Jing. They are doing clinical trials on their Yi Jing healing methods using western methodologies to evaluate the outcomes. So far they have had very good results.
[...] Chi on the Great Wall By Shawn Cartwright The Great Wall, like the Forbidden City, is on the checklist of “things you must see at least once if you go to China.” It was our [...]